| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Mary Ann |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 00:15:29
After reading Alice Miller’s “The Body Never Lies” I have been ruminating a theory that I want to put forth to the board. Her book is not TMS specific, but relates to the concept of repression and her theory is that “ a child’s humiliation, impotence and bottled rage will manifest themselves as adult illness—be it cancer, stroke or other debilitating diseases.” She deals in her book with terrible cases of abuse, but I think lesser effects like TMS can be the result of repression in childhood.
My thought is this: Is TMS’ real purpose to distract us from feeling the emotions we have unconsciously repressed, or is it to urge us to actually acknowledge them and meet our unmet needs?
The psyche is very complex. In response to abusive situations we repress emotions, but also the needs that accompany them in order to survive. It’s been said that we needn’t actually feel our repressed emotions to get relief from TMS, but to know the brain’s strategy and it will go away.
I think that is successful, but only partly. The symptom imperative rings to me that the body just ups the volume on its message if it wasn’t heard in its first manifestation. The old adage that negative attention is better than none is very true.
Children who have been mistreated learn to survive by repressing the feelings, and learning not to need. But the needs don’t go away! They go underground, only to be expressed by the body. Needs like:
The need for comfort
The need for security
The need for affinity and to belong
The need to be acknowledged and valued
The need to be taken care of
The need to be loved unconditionally
The need for attention
The need not to have to take care of others at our own expense
If the child can’t get the need met one way, the body figures out a substitute in illness/unwellness. The sick person can legitimately “ask” to meet many needs in this way—get attention, be cared for, stop caring for others. It’s indirect, but it seems to “work”. However, the price is physical pain and illness.
My feeling is that the way to the everlasting cure from TMS and TMS equivalents like depression, anxiety, addiction, insomnia, and a multitude of other illnesses, is to mine the psyche for its unmet needs. To acknowledge the feelings that came about that these needs were not met (rage, sadness, fear, humiliation, loneliness, to name a few) and then to look for ways to “parent” our inner child ourselves. To give ourselves what we deeply crave.
The TMS personality is rife with people who suppress their own needs. We are people pleasers, perfectionists, goodists--all strategies that the small child may adapt in the way to trying to get his or her needs met, or (at least avoid more pain): “dad will love me if I am perfect”, “I won’t get hurt if I attend to mom’s mood before it gets worse.”
I think that the reason some people can cure themselves of TMS easily is that there aren’t as many deeply buried unmet needs. The child’s basic needs were met, but some higher level ones were not. The more basic the need not met, the greater the symptoms.
So look at your symptoms as your friend. Try to hear what your body is trying to tell you. You may not be able to do this without guided therapy (aka inner child work), but it’s starting to help me figure out my drivers. I’ll be following this approach to try to alleviate the anxiety (and insomnia) I am experiencing right now.
I think it would be an interesting psychology study to try to correlate unmet inner needs with how they manifest in the body. I suspect there would be commonalities, though nothing I could prove-- e.g. back pain=unmet need for unconditional love or security; stomach/digestive issues=unmet need for comfort. It seems to be my observation that the fibro sufferers experience their total breakdowns after too much time caring for others needs at their own expense.
I know this is simplistic, but it’s interesting to speculate that the body may be “systematic” (forgive the pun) in its cries for help. Maybe one day we’ll have the sophisticated knowledge to diagnose psychological problems just by examining how the body is ill. And that we’ll have advanced enough as a society to be able to get the proper prescription for therapy to deal with the problems, and this will be just as common as drugs are supplied to treat illness now.
This isn’t in any way to debunk Sarno’s work. I think he’s brilliant. I believe wholeheartedly that the psyche/mind generates the pain symptoms. But for me, the theory of distraction just isn’t enough. I do think the mind represses emotions for protection, but I think the body manifests illness and pain in order for the needs to be met in some other way.
Food for thought. What do you think?
Mary Ann |
| 9 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| floorten |
Posted - 10/01/2006 : 09:53:48
quote:
Originally posted by Wavy Soul
STOP PRETENDING!
(Go back and reread the "problem.")
LOL! Love it. I'll try and keep that in mind. Like many little jokes there's some deep wisdom in there too.
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 23:52:31
Hi
Fantastic thread. Did the whole thing really happen all today or is my dating wrong on my page?
I'm the one who posted about TMS killing us all...
I too loved this post:
"Fortunately, I've noticed a correlation between my conscious attention and resolve and the location of the problem. It's a game of whack-a-rat, with my attention as the hammer and the symptoms as the rat who can't be killed."
I've recently also read the Alice Miller book and didn't really see a big discrepancy between her and Sarno until reading this.
I agree that the whole thing, like life itself, is very complex. I think the distraction theory is BRILLIANT - after 30 years of all kinds of mind-body-emotion attempts to cure my FMS this was the real kicker for me. However, with Mary Anne's question:
"TMS’ real purpose to distract us from feeling the emotions we have unconsciously repressed, or is it to urge us to actually acknowledge them and meet our unmet needs? "
I thought about it more and it seems to me it is absolutely both. But the second is a well-known theory and never really did it for me until I kind of "got" Sarno's distraction theory.
I use the following story to explain to people how I have begun healing myself after all this time. I tell them there are two parts. Here is the first:
"Pretend you are walking into a jungle. Okay? Now, you are in the jungle, and in front of you is an angry elephant, trumpeting loudly and stampeding right at you. On your left is a tiger getting ready to pounce. On your right a lion is roaring as it approaches. You step back, but behind you is a huge poisonous snake slithering down a tree.
What is the one thing you can do to get out of this situation?"
It is very interesting to ask people this question. They have all kinds of ridiculous responses, like "levitate," or "just surrender." Yeah, right! I tell them that there is actually a guaranteed way out of this dilemma. (I'll tell it at the end of this post, and you should really think about it. Then reread the whole thing).
The SECOND thing I tell people is that it's all about actually FEELING your feelings - not suppressing OR expressing them. Sometimes expression is the only way you can access them, but as I think Sarno himself says, over-expression is another avoidance mechanism. I have found ways to actually feel feelings that work very well.
______________________________
I love many of the points made here. As someone said, this community is really evolving together and pushing through some old, old trances, I think.
ANSWER to the Jungle Dilemma:...
are you ready....?
STOP PRETENDING!
(Go back and reread the "problem.")
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| Mary Ann |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 17:28:28
quote:
Fortunately, I've noticed a correlation between my conscious attention and resolve and the location of the problem. It's a game of whack-a-rat, with my attention as the hammer and the symptoms as the rat who can't be killed.
This would seem to me to corroborate the theory of the symptoms serving a general purpose (ie. distraction or an internal alarm mechanism) rather than being specific expressions linked to specific problems.
I love the "whack-a-rat" analogy! Quite apt. I am not really sure that there would be a direct correlation of symptoms either, I just wondered if anyone could find commonalities if they looked for them. The human condition is way too complex to be reduced to formualae like that. But it's interesting to speculate.
Mary Ann |
| Mary Ann |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 17:20:20
Penny thanks for your comments. I have found your posts to be very articulate and helpful to me as well.
quote:
But I'm not sure I agree with the idea that it's easier to
end TMS if you have fewer buried needs, though. It's certainly an interesting theory, but the nature of human beings--living in separate bodies--makes this difficult to prove b/c no one but yourself can understand or experience your own suffering.
I think in my insomniac ravings last night I expressed myself inadequately. My idea is not the number of buried needs that makes it harder to recover, but that more basic needs are unmet. You know Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
1. Physiological
2. Safety
3. Love/belonging
4. Status (esteem)
5. Self actualization
My idea was that if your suppressed needs are at (say) level 1 or 2, simply knowing that TMS is a distraction tool won't be enough. And even though Sarno doesn't express it in the same way I'm proposing, he does acknowledge that therapy is required for success in some cases. This would be my take on why some people recover quicker than others as well.
quote:
Acknowledging and actually changing my patterns of behavior that created my suffering (e.g. rooting out my unmet need and changing my actions so it's met) has helped me "rapidly" recover.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with the behaviour aspect. But my thought was that you first need awareness of what your unmet needs are before you can formulate the appropriate here and now action to address them. I just haven't seen that articulated before.
It's great that we can push each other as a community to greater levels of awareness. Thanks for your contributions and dialogue on my ideas.
Mary Ann |
| HilaryN |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 13:48:32
Great post, Mary Ann.
Hilary N |
| tennis tom |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 10:39:04
quote:
"Someone posted recently, asking if TMS is what eventually ends up killing us all."
----------------------------------------------------------------
In my mother's case, at 74 she got kidney cancer but did not die from it, but instead died, after 9 months in ICU, of complications from the surgery that was supposed to give her a normal life.
My dad is still alive at 84. In his case he "took to bed" after having to face, (or not face), losing his ability to drive, thus his independence. He had several falls which the meds attributed to TIA's, (mini-strokes). My dx is that he would get a little dizzy due to mild empezema, stand up too fast, without attention, and fall.
When this happens today, an ambulance is called, and a plethora of tests, and images are taken and when nothing structural can be found it is labeled a TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack). This justifies all the money charged to the insurance company for all the testing to limit the mal-practice liability of the emergency provider. They can't just dx it as: "You're getting older and need to pay more attention when you stand-up so you don't faint."
In my Dad's case he "took-to-bed", a TMS symptom that in the end maybe "can kill us all"--GIVING UP. The docs, hospitals, and PT's, did not deal with this "dis-ease" and just shook their collective heads and walked away form him.
To make a long story short, my brother and I took over his life, moved him and his wife from SF to a nice place, an independent living community in Marin, got him an electric wheel-chair, take him to the Indian casino to play the slots and after a year he is improving.
If we had not intervened I am sure he would have been dead by now with no intervention by his insurance company or Medi-Care--it's cheaper that way. |
| Penny |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 10:13:51
quote:
Originally posted by Mary Ann
I think that the reason some people can cure themselves of TMS easily is that there aren’t as many deeply buried unmet needs. The child’s basic needs were met, but some higher level ones were not. The more basic the need not met, the greater the symptoms.
MaryAnn, You have really expressed your thoughts so well, and have made me think a little differently ... thank you so much.
As to your point above, I'd like to share; ferreting out unmet needs has indeed helped to lessen my pain. But I'm not sure I agree with the idea that it's easier to end TMS if you have fewer buried needs, though. It's certainly an interesting theory, but the nature of human beings--living in separate bodies--makes this difficult to prove b/c no one but yourself can understand or experience your own suffering.
Sometimes in an effort to validate my TMS pain (which by my description was "paralyzing and excrutiating"), I consider my suffering is worse than someone else's. But in reality, this is not measurable. A great example of this is childbirth.
Many women tell their birth stories and express the drama of their suffering ... sometimes in an attempt to say "my suffering was worse than yours" release, even though the factual information may be almost identical (14-hour labor, no epideral, "text book" delivery). The meaning we place on suffering has a lot to do with how we express it, but it may not mean that one mother had less pain than another. Sarno talks about military officers who lost limbs in battle but felt little or no pain b/c they realized that their injury meant an end to the emotional hell of war. You see what I mean?
Indeed, acknowledging unmet needs is significant to recovery, but some people here have been quickly cured of debilitating pain, while others have taken longer to achieve the same results with a similarly self-described pain. I don't believe in a correlation.
Acknowledging and actually changing my patterns of behavior that created my suffering (e.g. rooting out my unmet need and changing my actions so it's met) has helped me "rapidly" recover. I now allow myself to experience emotions that were formally removed (repressed) from my emotional vocabulary. e.g. anger, jealousy, and--not often discussed--helplessness, and I've changed my behavior too. In the height of my TMS I had a pattern of behavior that suppressed helplessness: I read everything I could on the potential diseases my docs were investigating supposedly "empowering myself" with information. I basically earned an honorary medical doctorate online and in the library b/c--NOW I realize--I was trying to do something instead of allowing myself to feel helpless over my "illness" or the doctor's mercy. This has been an amazing discovery for me, b/c now, I can see the paralyzing pattern in my life that kept me from ever experiencing helplessness. This pattern was not limited to my illness: I did this with practically EVERYTHING in my life. Yikes!!!! Now I'm working to break this pattern and I feel helpless and it is quite miserable, but my FM is getting quieter.
I share part of "my story" to say that acknowledging unmet needs is indeed powerful, but our behavior plays a huge role in our recovery too.
quote:
Originally posted by Mary Ann
Maybe one day we’ll have the sophisticated knowledge to diagnose psychological problems just by examining how the body is ill. And that we’ll have advanced enough as a society to be able to get the proper prescription for therapy to deal with the problems, and this will be just as common as drugs are supplied to treat illness now.
Wow! This is would be a remarkable achievement. I really hope this will happen! This will be a giant leap from the pharma/medical world as it is today ... or should I say the Brave New World we have created. (Aldous Huxley's book.)
Very interesting thread, thank you for sharing.
>|< Penny
Non illigitamus carborundum. |
| floorten |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 06:38:19
quote:
Originally posted by Mary Ann
I think it would be an interesting psychology study to try to correlate unmet inner needs with how they manifest in the body. I suspect there would be commonalities, though nothing I could prove-- e.g. back pain=unmet need for unconditional love or security; stomach/digestive issues=unmet need for comfort.
I've considered this, and I believe Sarno did too. What I've noticed with my symptoms however contradicts this as a possibility. You're probably aware of how TMS symptoms shift around the body on a whim. In the course of a year I've had symptoms of back pain, neck pain, headaches, dry eyes, gastro probs, fibro-type problems, exhaustion, ankle pain etc etc.
If each of these symptoms represented a different unmet need, then I'd be truly screwed!
Fortunately, I've noticed a correlation between my conscious attention and resolve and the location of the problem. It's a game of whack-a-rat, with my attention as the hammer and the symptoms as the rat who can't be killed.
This would seem to me to corroborate the theory of the symptoms serving a general purpose (ie. distraction or an internal alarm mechanism) rather than being specific expressions linked to specific problems.
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
| floorten |
Posted - 09/30/2006 : 06:30:03
As I understand it, the big issue Sarno had with the idea that the physical symptoms are *manifestations* of the repressed feelings, rather than distractions from them, is that a significant number of his patients healed just from the knowledge of what was happening inside them.
If this required no conscious confrontation of repressed rage, merely possession of the knowledge that the brain may behave in this way, then it appears to leave the repressed feelings intact, although the symptoms may go away.
I too am not 100% convinced about the "distraction" explanation over and above the possibilities that the symptoms are either dysfunctional ways to draw attention *to* the feelings, or physical manisfestations of the rage itself.
However, as we may never rightly know for sure what the answer to this is, I think it's important to remember the map is not the territory! If Sarno's map as it stands gets us from A to B, then it's fit for the purpose, and as good as any other.
To my mind, Sarno's explanation seems superior at least in the aspect that it puts the patient "at cause" and in conscious control, rather than making them a victim to their repressed feelings turned bad.
"What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."
Robert Anton Wilson |
|
|
